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I do not use the word magnificent seriously. The only place I can think I would have used it would have been pretending to be an aristocrat talking about a view from an exotic vacation. Whereas I have said superb ever since I played the original mortal kombat.

I stumbled onto the movie "The Ten Commandments" this weekend and I heard something too awesome not so share. When Pharaoh goes to visit Moses to see if he is building an army or a city, Moses shows him that he has constructed something beyond the Pharaoh's wildest expectation. Pharaoh's response? "Superb!" I hold that superb is the right word.

Translation is a funny thing. When it is done literally it loses a lot of its meaning and becomes flat. I was watching a fansub of bleach the other day where the translators decided to convey the meaning behind the phrase rather than the literal definition. It was awesome. Instead of translating urusai as "shut up", or "you are annoying" the character said "blow me". Sure the literal sense was off, but the meaning was exactly right in the situation. The characters had so much more dimension to them. That probably has something to do with why so many famous books written in foreign languages have so many translations. A translator gets to tweek the story a bit.

I stumbled onto the movie "The Ten Commandments" this weekend and I heard something too awesome not so share. When Pharaoh goes to visit Moses to see if he is building an army or a city, Moses shows him that he has constructed something beyond the Pharaoh's wildest expectation. Pharaoh's response? "Superb!" I hold that superb is the right word.

Translation is a funny thing. When it is done literally it loses a lot of its meaning and becomes flat. I was watching a fansub of bleach the other day where the translators decided to convey the meaning behind the phrase rather than the literal definition. It was awesome. Instead of translating urusai as "shut up", or "you are annoying" the character said "blow me". Sure the literal sense was off, but the meaning was exactly right in the situation. The characters had so much more dimension to them. That probably has something to do with why so many famous books written in foreign languages have so many translations. A translator gets to tweek the story a bit.

That is true. But the fact remains that both magnificent and superb are adequate translations. With magnificent sounding more slightly refined (which ties into Rigardo being the Silver Eyed Lion KING).

Saw an early release of volume twelve today, and one particular translation caught my eye. Instead of "the Zimas had twins", meaning the last name of a family, the translation was "Zemu", as in the first name of one man.

Saw an early release of volume twelve today, and one particular translation caught my eye. Instead of "the Zimas had twins", meaning the last name of a family, the translation was "Zemu", as in the first name of one man.

...how sure are we that the fan translation is correct?

R.

Indeed - looking at the raw it does say ZEMU.
The quote is:

Quote:

聞いたか 裏のゼムさんとこの話

Good spot. Chalk it up do dyslexia probably since ma(マ) and mu(ム) can easily become short circuited in the brain I find. So I guess Zem or Zemu is right.

Yuma - Translated as Uma. Went back and checked volume 10 and noticed they used Uma there as well (when she lost her arm after the first battle with the 3 scouts). I'm missing my volume 9, so can't check how she was named in the party allocation scene. Never really caught my attention before since she wasn't a notable character when I first read through that bit.

In Clarice's debriefing, the fan translation says that number 9 should be replaced with number 7 (in reference to allocation in the northern region), while Viz says number 9 should be promoted to number 7. Minor difference in detail, I suppose.

Lunee - Translated as Renée. I rather like Renée better; Lunee never really made sense to me.

Yuma - Translated as Uma. Went back and checked volume 10 and noticed they used Uma there as well (when she lost her arm after the first battle with the 3 scouts). I'm missing my volume 9, so can't check how she was named in the party allocation scene. Never really caught my attention before since she wasn't a notable character when I first read through that bit.

In Clarice's debriefing, the fan translation says that number 9 should be replaced with number 7 (in reference to allocation in the northern region), while Viz says number 9 should be promoted to number 7. Minor difference in detail, I suppose.

Lunee - Translated as Renée. I rather like Renée better; Lunee never really made sense to me.

Yes, most unfortunate translations...

Don't know why they decided to call Yuma a horse (uma = horse in japanese). Needless to say, that is not her name.

The No 9 to No 7 thing says: "But number 9 to number 7..." (japanese love dropping 'obvious' verbs) and continues to "and increase the total battle power of the others". I think 'replace' makes more sense than promote personally.

Mmm... I've never got my hands over Viz's version, but instead I had some volumes of Glénat's spanish version, and some translations really caught my attention.

To said it quickly, Clare is "Claire", Teresa is "Theresa", Rubel is "Ruvuru" and Rimt, the boss of the organization (as we have seen) is called "Rimuto". I have no clue about the original names (not beyond anime's "Kureaaaaagh" from Raki ) so I dunno if they are correct or not. Spanish translations usually keep the names very close to original spelling, like in Berserk we have Gatsu instead of "Gatts" or "Gutts", and "Kiasca" instead of "Casca" (maybe because the verb "cascar" has a close meaning to masturbation ).

PD: I've just bought volume 3 and realised that Teresa is called "Theresa la sonriente" (Smiling Teresa). Here it's more understandable, since the litteral translation would have been "Theresa la de la tenue sonrisa" (Teresa of the faint smile) and geez, it sounds no good at all.

PD2: As an "interesting" fact, Bishou no Teresa sounds really funny in spanish because "Bishou" reminds the spelling of the word bicho with andalusian accent. "Bicho no Teresa" means "Bug no Teresa" in spanish

Funny, since I just posted about the same in another thread. I want to note that, as much as I complained about "Rubel" and "Ilena", which aber both wrong indeed ... "Uma" and "Renée" are the correct translations, and I'm happy that VIZ got those right.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyclone

Yes, most unfortunate translations...

Don't know why they decided to call Yuma a horse (uma = horse in japanese). Needless to say, that is not her name.

Renee is as absurd as Japanese Katakana spellings can get. Rune is indeed the Japanese spelling of the French (!) name René or Renée. Lune/e is not a name neither is Rune. Renée turns into Rune in Japanese because it is based on the French pronunciation, it is also spelt "Rene" when based on the English one. But Renee is correct. They even added the "e" to use the feminine form of the name, not like back then with Noel/le, where they gave her a male name. I'm so happy xD

Quote:

Originally Posted by Korinov

To said it quickly, Clare is "Claire", Teresa is "Theresa", Rubel is "Ruvuru" and Rimt, the boss of the organization (as we have seen) is called "Rimuto". I have no clue about the original names (not beyond anime's "Kureaaaaagh" from Raki ) so I dunno if they are correct or not.

They're all correct and almost the same anyway, apart from Rubel which is wrong, while Ruvuru is correct (but it should be Louvre ). Clare and Teresa are the spellings used in the Japanese manga, so you can consider them "correct". However Claire and Theresa are just variant spellings of the same name, which do exist as well.

The other one is Rimuto in Katakana, so keeping it just like that or turning it into Rimt is possible. We don't know where his name comes from really.

Also, Bishou no Teresa means "Smiling Theresa" ... I'm not sure why they added a "faint" in there in English, maybe because it sounds better (it does indeed) or because there is a difference that I don't get, since I'm no native speaker. In French they also simply called her "la souriante", which is about the same as in Spanish.

I believe that Rimuto's (リムト) name comes from another art related name; Gustav Klimt or in Japanese グスタフ・クリムト I heard Yagi named a lot of characters after art related things like. At least that is what I heard...

yes, I heard that too, but we can't be sure unless someone asks him in an interview or so ^^ There might even be some other museum that his Katakana were taken from, which hasn't been discovered yet, like the other Men in Black XD
For them at least we can be sure, because it would be too much of a coincidence that all their names correspond to major art museums. Also at one point in the story they went into the "Pablo mountains" ... so yes, art related names do appear.

But whatever spelling you chose, the name is really weird >.< I just call him "the Boss" for now.

I've heard that MiB are usually named after famous museums all around the world, like Ruvuru/Rubel = Louvre, Orsay/Orsé = Orsay, Ermita/Eremita = Hermitage, Rado/Radu = Prado... etc. Looking at Claymore's names, they seem to be inspired in arts (Ophelia, for example). Well, I suppose we have to thank Yagi his interest in world culture, instead of choosing cool but unpronounceable japanese names (check Bleach's databooks if you need an idea )

So, if the Japanese goal was to write the name 'Uma' why the heck wouldn't they write 'ウマ' instead of 'ユマ'? Makes no sense. The former is even pronounced exactly the same. I don't know about you, but I'm personally for simple transliterating the katakana when there is ambiguity instead of searching all the languages in the world over for potential candidates.

So, if the Japanese goal was to write the name 'Uma' why the heck wouldn't they write 'ウマ' instead of 'ユマ'? Makes no sense. The former is even pronounced exactly the same. I don't know about you, but I'm personally for simple transliterating the katakana when there is ambiguity instead of searching all the languages in the world over for potential candidates.

Good question. As a matter of fact they call Uma Thurman ユマ・サーマン (Yuma). The Japanese wikipedia explains that - just as you said - her name means horse in Japanese, so they decided to render it as ユマ Yuma in Katakana. Unfortunately there is no source, but it doesn't sound impossible.

Personally I don't think Uma's name is part of the "ambiguous" ones, since it was quite easy to find back then when I tried to look for corresponding names, thanks to Uma Thurman. The names that really give me a headache are "Riful" or "Isley" or "Rigardo" or something

Good question. As a matter of fact they call Uma Thurman ユマ・サーマン (Yuma). The Japanese wikipedia explains that - just as you said - her name means horse in Japanese, so they decided to render it as ユマ Yuma in Katakana. Unfortunately there is no source, but it doesn't sound impossible.

Personally I don't think Uma's name is part of the "ambiguous" ones, since it was quite easy to find back then when I tried to look for corresponding names, thanks to Uma Thurman. The names that really give me a headache are "Riful" or "Isley" or "Rigardo" or something

Yes, since they don't want to call anyone a horse, THEY changed it. Since they don't want to use the name Uma, why should we change it back from Yuma? Simply put it's not what they wrote (and it stinks of 'dumbing down' style editting that I am allergic to).
We can guess as to what they meant, but why bother? They say Yuma, we can say Yuma. I think if we're not certain, then providing a valid transliteration and leaving it alone is the best policy.

I could, by the same logic, decide that riful most closely resembles "Riffle" and say that 'RAI' and 'RI' are 'close enough', but it's just a silly guess and trying to impose that guess on others is not my thing.

When it's obvious like KUREA (Clare) or Jean or someone, sure, but finding a reference on wiki where the japanese DELIBERATELY misspell something trying not to offend a weirdly named actress by fiddling with her name becuase it means horse in their native language is a bit of a stretch.

As said, there is no source for what is written on wikipedia, actually they added the "citation needed" tag to it, so the info is not certain at all.

And the difference is, in English Uma does not mean horse and it is a name, so there is no reason to stick to the Japanese changes imho. And since there is proof that "Yuma" is their way of writting the name "Uma", to me that makes it a valid transcription and I do agree with the choice Viz made. But since there are no definite rules every translator bases their choices on different aspects.

But of course, you can always spell it Uma and pronouce Yuma Personally I used to call Uma Thurman "Yuma" because I kind of assumed her name to be pronounced in an American/English way. Which might be another reason for her name to end up as Yuma in Katakana (though I don't believe they're as ignorant as me).